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There Needs To Be A Proper Balance Between Bat And Ball Sanjay Manjrekar Bashes Modern Rules

There needs to be a proper balance between bat and ball - Sanjay Manjrekar bashes modern rules

Sanjay Manjrekar is someone who doesn't mind mincing his words and yet again he has come hard against the modern-day rules and regulations of cricket, something, that has been highly tilted in favour of batsmen for a while now. In a recent column for the Hindustan Times, Manjrekar has questioned the balance between bat and ball which has been constantly in favour of batsmen, especially in the modern times.

Attributing the changes in the dynamics of the game to the invention of the helmet, Manjrekar stated that it has allowed the modern-day batsmen to play a fearless brand of cricket and employ 360-degree shots. Manjrekar felt that a batsman from the yesteryears wouldn’t have dared to play those shots against express pace without having helmets.

“Would a batter go down on one knee against a big fast bowler, his face perfectly in line with a ball coming at 90 mph, to play a Dilscoop if he wasn’t wearing a helmet? When we gave batters helmets, we should have felt obligated to give something significant back to the bowlers too,” Manjrekar wrote in his column.

The evolution of cricket bats has also done wonders to even top edges going over the fence quite consistently. The broadness of the bats have meant that the batsmen always have an upper hand against the bowlers especially in the white-ball formats.

Manjrekar is not in favour of the easy sixes which the tail-enders often tend to get in the death overs off top edges despite not getting the middle of the bat. With so much in line, Manjrekar feels that bowlers need to be rewarded more in order to ensure a balance between bat and ball.

“For the game to stay absorbing and meaningful, especially to the discerning viewer, one must keep ensuring that there is a proper balance between bat and ball and it all makes sense in the end,” Manjrekar said.

“It pains me, especially in T20 cricket, to see the bowler being penalised 6 runs when he has bowled a superb short ball, bouncing at a legitimate height which a No.11 batter has slogged with eyes closed. The ball flies off the edge over the keeper, crashing into the sight-screen,” Manjrekar added.

Referring to baseball where a batter only gets points when he nails the ball out of the park or from the middle of the bat. No points are awarded if he gets an edge. However, in cricket, batsmen are rewarded despite the bowler actually winning the battle by deceiving him.

“In baseball, the batter gets no reward if the ball flies off his club behind him because he has not made a good enough connection. Baseball rewards success while cricket rewards failure; no wonder the batter in cricket has a sheepish smile every time this happens,” Manjrekar quipped.

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Laws are written in favor of batsman: Ian Chappell

The 2018 sandpaper gate controversy surfaced once again after Australia’s Cameron Bancroft made few bold statements regarding the matter. Bancroft suggested that the bowling unit had the idea about what was happening on the field in Newlands. The bowling attack consisting of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and off-spinner Nathan Lyon later issued a joint statement denying the claims made by Bancroft. The former Australian cricketer Ian Chappell has now suggested some alternatives that can help in preventing the players taking such action. “I think about 20 years ago, I said what they should do is go to the captains of every country and you get a list of things that they think will help the ball swing. Then you send us all these lists, we’ll go through them and we’ll come up with one thing and it will be a sensible thing, not using a bottle cap to scrape the ball. It’ll be viable but we’ll give you one thing that’ll help you swing the ball and everything else will be illegal,” Chappell said during a discussion on ESPNCricinfo. He further went on to say that the laws generally favour the batsmen more than the bowlers. “Let’s look at the way the laws are written. They are pretty much always written in favor of the batsman and if you go right back to underarm bowling to sidearm bowling… to body line and ball-tampering – they all come about because the balance is too much in favor of the batsmen and the bowlers eventually say ‘we have had enough, we are mad as hell and we are going to do something about it’,” he further added. Bancroft was earlier banned for nine months by Cricket Australia while the then captain Steve Smith and opening batsman David Warner were slapped with a one-year ban each.

Jemimah Rodrigues to play for Northern Superchargers in The Hundred

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It's actually the batsmen at fault: Tabraiz Shamsi backs Mankading

South African left-arm chinaman bowler Tabraiz Shamsi has come in support of ‘Mankading’ and has stated that it is well within the rules of cricket and the bowler shouldn’t be held responsible for running out a batman in that manner and rather a batsman should be held responsible for not upholding the spirit of the game. Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin who has always been vocal about this particular form of dismissal had demanded free balls whenever the non-striker tries to steal an extra yard. Like when a bowler is penalised for bowling a no-ball, Ashwin feels that a free ball would ensure that the non-striker remains at the crease until the bowler completes his action. Former Indian cricketer and currently one of the leading commentators, Sanjay Manjrekar had earlier written a column in Hindustan Times and had asked fans and cricket followers to come up with more suggestions of the rule changes in the game which they look forward to. In response, Ashwin had recommended a free ball to a bowler. In the particular Twitter thread shared by Manjrekar, Ashwin indulged in a conversation with a Twitter user where he mentioned why bowlers tend to refrain from running out a batsman in that manner. “The mental trauma that the bowlers may go through stops them from doing it,” Ashwin had tweeted. Replying to that particular response, Tabraiz Shamsi said that he fails to understand the reason why bowlers are held accountable for running out a batsman when actually the batsman is at fault. Quite often we have seen the non-striker batsman strolling out of his crease. Until recent times, most of the bowlers have refrained from Mankading the batsman as it is considered against the spirit of the game. "@ashwinravi99 I think all the bowlers should do it without any fear… it’s within the rules of the game. Why must the bowlers get abused about the “spirit of cricket” when it’s actually the batsmen that are stealing yards and THAT is against the spirit of cricket. That’s the real truth,” Shami tweeted. Ashwin received criticism from all quarters when he ran out Jos Buttler in a group game during the 2019 edition of the Indian Premier League. The off-spinner recently mentioned an incident when his Punjab Kings (then Kings XI Punjab) teammate Ankit Rajpoot had refused to Mankad a batsman when the match was firmly on the line and could have resulted in a win for his team. Rajpoot told his skipper Ashwin that he will be made the villain if he runs out the batsmen in that manner.

Tamim Iqbal 'disappointed' at losing 10 ODI Super League points even Bangladesh clinch ODI series

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